EDN Website Blog

EDN-related website changes for ArcGIS version 9.3

jbarry — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:08:00 GMT

Starting with ArcGIS version 9.3 in July 2008, developers are encouraged to use the new ESRI Resource Centers to access SDK documentation, samples, product technical information, as well as tools and resources for interacting with communities of ArcGIS developers around the world.

For the time being, this EDN website here will continue to exist and be the repository for developer content for ArcGIS versions 9.2 and prior. It will no longer be used for ArcGIS version 9.3 nor beyond.

Why?

Our goal here is to create one single website for all users' product usage resource needs. At version 9.2 and prior, developers used the EDN website and end-users of ESRI's GIS software tended to use the ESRI Support Center online.

Feedback from the user community, as well as our own technology development goals indicate that developers need information about product installation, architecture, administration, and functional usage as much as any other user, and end-users more and more often are making use of information for product customization, components, scripting, programming, and other resources typically associated with application developers. As our technology continues to grow along with the maturity of information technology, the lines between "user" and "developer" continue to blur and overlap.

So as you use the ESRI Resource Center online, we encourage you to interact with other developers like yourself, as well as GIS end-users and the resources they all use to be successful. That is the place online where the EDN community will continue to grow, through code sharing galleries, discussion forums, and blogs from ESRI development teams, as well as new community tools and resources upcoming such as open chat, tech workshop webcasts, and a fully wiki'd Knowledge Base technical documentation set.

What about the EDN program?

The ESRI Developer Network software subscription program and its add-on training and support products are not changing.

Developers around the world have found EDN to be a very cost-effective and simple way to access the entire ArcGIS technology and product base for product customization, implementation, as well as the design and development of applications and systems. This has been a popular product and is not going anywhere. Actually, ESRI is committed to making improvements and additions to the subscription program as our leadership position in the geospatial technology industry continues to grow.

EDN site down for short time on Sunday

eleanord — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:28:00 GMT

Some of our systems are being upgraded this weekend. As a result, the EDN web site and this blog may be unavailable between the hours of 7:00AM PST and 9:00AM PST on Sunday, May 11th. Our apologies in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

2008 Dev Summit Blog Posts - ArcGIS Server Code Challenge

andygup — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:21:00 GMT

Listen in on the following podcast interviews for developers who participated in the ArcGIS Server Code Challenge.

Kent Riggins, a software engineer with the U.S. Federal Government, briefly discusses his ArcGIS Server Code Challenge entry, Show Results Table Task in ArcGIS Explorer.
Listen or download: MP3 [4:10 | 1.94 MB]
Keith Fraley, GIS Developer with Shell Oil Company in the U.S., discusses his ArcGIS Server Code Challenge entry, WMS Search and Spatialization Tool for ArcGIS Server.
Listen or download: MP3 [5:03 | 2.35 MB]
Dave Bowman, 2nd Place winner in the ArcGIS Server Code Challenge, talks about his code sample entry, ArcGIS Server Virtual Tile Server.
Listen or download: MP3 [8:22 | 3.87 MB]

SP5 offers IBM Portal Server ArcGIS Portlet development

eleanord — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:44:00 GMT

ArcGIS Server 9.2 Service Pack 5 includes an enhancement to the ArcGIS Server Java ADF which provides support for IBM Portal Server ArcGIS Portlet development. This gives you the ability to create and publish GIS Mapping Portlets inside IBM Portal Server. In conjunction, SP5 includes a plug-in for the IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD) environment so that you can create and deploy those ArcGIS Portlets more efficiently. The following documents have been added related to this SP5 enhancement.

New article - Install ArcGIS RAD plug-in
Programming language(s): Java
Development platforms: ArcGIS Server
After installing SP5 you will neeed to update the IBM RAD IDE to leverage the ArcGIS RAD plug-in. This article walks you through that process.

New article - Developing ArcGIS Portlet applications in RAD
Programming language(s): Java
Development platforms: ArcGIS Server
This article takes you through the basic steps required to create an ArcGIS Portlet application using the plug-in. The sample application displays a map, toolbar, table of contents, map overview, results, results details, and an empty task pane.

Eclipse plug-in to help Java developers debug their ArcObjects code

eleanord — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:09:00 GMT

(The following post was contributed by Divesh Goyal and the Java development team)

Updated 4/14/08 - Added link to a downloadable ZIP file containing the plug-in.

New tool - Eclipse plug-in for debugging Java ArcObjects code
Programming language(s): Java
Development platforms: ArcGIS Engine, ArcGIS Server

As we approach another developer summit, I am glad to announce the availability of an Eclipse plug-in for ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Engine Java Developers that will greatly simplify debugging ArcObjects code.

About the plug-in

One of the most invaluable tools that developers have at their disposal is a debugger through which they can step through code one statement at a time and inspect objects in the application. As most of you may already know, java classes in the ArcObjects API are really only proxies to underlying COM ArcObjects. As a result, examining these proxies in the debugger only reveals their internal details and not the state of the ArcObjects. This makes it difficult to find out information such as the co-ordinates of an Geometry, or the Layers in a MapServer. Consequently, developers have to sprinkle their code with System.out.printlns and analyze traces on the console to get this information. This approach is inconvenient and time consuming.

With this new Eclipse plug-in, Java developers can examine the state of the underlying ArcObjects right in Eclipse IDE's Debug Perspective by enabling the "Show Logical Structure" option on the Expression and Variables window. Here’s an example of a Point object without the “Show Logical Structure” option enabled.

This information fails to provide any valuable insight into the underlying ArcObject and is not helpful in reasoning through a workflow while debugging. Now here’s the logical representation of the same object using the “Show Logical Structure” option enabled.

The logical representation presents more comprehensible information about the underlying ArcObject's state. This state is defined by the no-argument getter methods on it. You might sometimes see exception messages like “Exception Occurred: com.sun.jdi.InvocationException occurred invoking method” in the logical representation. This is normal and happens when some property of the ArcObject is not valid in the current context of the application.

The underlying ArcObjects could be running remotely in a separate process as in the case of ArcGIS Server web applications, or in the same process like in ArcGIS Engine applications. Thus, both Engine and Server developers can take advantage of this plug-in to debug their applications. I am very excited to share this plug-in with you, and look forward to your feedback. Code on!

How to get the plug-in

Follow these steps to download and install the plug-in from the EDN Website:

In the Eclipse workbench, go to Help > Software Updates > Find and Install
Select Search for new features to install, and click Next
Create a New Remote Site for the URL “http://downloads.esri.com/EDN/java/plugins/eclipse”
Enable this remote site and click Finish.
Expand the EDN tree in Search Results, and select the ArcGIS Debug feature.
Proceed to install the plug-in, and restart the workbench when prompted.

Added 4/14/08 - If you are unable to access the plug-in from the URL in Step 3 above, we have also made it available as a downloadable ZIP file here.

More DevSummit podcasts

eleanord — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:42:00 GMT

More podcasts related to the upcoming DevSummit have been posted on the Conference's Event page. Listen in to get a preview of some of the sessions that we think will be most popular.

Jeremy Bartley & Jayant Sai chat about building mash-ups using the ArcGIS Server JavaScript API.
Listen or download: MP3 [16:53 | 7.73 MB]
REST and ArcGIS Server is a hot topic for Keyur Shah & Jeremy Bartley.
Listen or download: MP3 [13:15 | 6.10 MB]
Deane Kensok provides a preview of the "Enhancing Your Applications with ArcGIS Online" session.
Listen or download: MP3 [6:25 | 2.97 MB]
ASP.NET AJAX and the ArcGIS Server Web ADF are discussed by Rex Hansen and Art Haddad.
Listen or download: MP3 [10:14 | 4.72 MB]

Why do you code?

eleanord — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:12:00 GMT

We want to understand you the Developer. Please complete this quick 3 question survey and let us know:

Why do you code?
As a developer; when/where do you get the best ideas?
What inspires you as a programmer?

Content updates last week

eleanord — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:02:00 GMT

In addition to the rollout of 200+ new topics aimed at Java developers, there were a couple of other content updates last week.

New article - How to leverage the schema cache
Programming language(s): C# or VB.Net
Development platforms: ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Engine
This new article discusses how to best use the schema cache within an ArcObjects application. The schema cache is a cached snapshot of the geodatabase system tables (often referred to as the geodatabase schema). In an enterprise environment the geodatabase system tables (geodatabase schema) are in constant use by ArcGIS. Caching this schema locally can reduce database roundtrips by using the locally cached representation of the geodatabase schema.

NIM012341 - ArcGIS Server EDN link to monitoring performance is broken
Programming language(s): C# or VB.Net
Development platforms: ArcGIS Server
The Overview of ArcGIS Server application performance tuning article has been updated to correctly point to the topics that discuss performance monitoring capabilities and options in ArcGIS Server.

Java, Java, Java...

eleanord — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:42:00 GMT

Over the last few months the Java Engine team has been feverishly producing over 200 new help topics, most of which include code snippets. Since these topics are applicable to 9.2 we've decided to publish them now rather than waiting to deliver them with the next software release. You can find the topics in a new ArcObjects Developer Guide section within the Building cross-platform solutions with ArcGIS Engine using Java book in the EDN Documentation Library. The topics are grouped into a number of sub-sections that focus on different areas of the ArcGIS architecture. These include:

Finding locations with geocoding offers topics detailing the ins and outs of assigning a location to an address.
Next is the Geodatabase management section with a multitude of topics discussing such things as How to create new geodatabases, How to query geodatabase objects, How to create a multimodal network dataset, How to check for topology error features in a geodatabase topology, How to convert simple data to a geodatabase, and How to export a dataset to an XML workspace document among other things.
Key to working with ArcGIS is understanding Geometry and spatial reference. This section includes topics on When do I need to simplify a geometry, Understanding coordinate management in ArcGIS, How to convert between high and low precision spatial references, and many more.
Geoprocessing puts powerful analysis capabilities at your fingertips. Learn how to access geoprocessing tools and toolboxes, use ArcObjects as an input to a tool, and generate your own custom geoprocessing tool.
The Mapping and visualization section deals with--you guessed it--maps, map display, layers, page layouts, symbols, renderers, and more.

As an added bonus, each of these new topics also includes the comment feature! You can use it to ask for additional clarification on the topic, offer suggestions for other related topics of discussion, or provide your own expertise in that area to the Java community at large.

What to expect at DevSummit - a podcast

eleanord — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:40:00 GMT

The first in a series of podcasts about the upcoming DevSummit is now available. Listen to Rob Elkins and Jim Barry, from ESRI’s Product Development team, talk about what you will see at this year's conference. MP3 [15:40 | 7.21 MB]

DevSummit news – 2008 session descriptions now available

eleanord — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:10:00 GMT

The Developer Summit conference calendar has been posted, along with descriptions of the content in the pre-conference seminars (free!) and the technical sessions. Check it out here or go to www.esri.com/devsummit. And, don’t forget to take advantage of the early bird special rates for the Developer Summit. Early bird rates are good up until February 15th. The Developer Summit is March 17 – 20, 2008 in Palm Springs, California.

Explorer SDK content updated for Build 440

eleanord — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:22:00 GMT

This week the latest version of the ArcGIS Explorer SDK was posted. This release of the SDK coincides with the release of Build 440. While there were no API changes in Build 440, the updated SDK features a Custom Task Style Guide and example code for each of the E2API classes as in the View3D class shown below.

This week's content updates

eleanord — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:35:00 GMT

The following content changes related to ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Engine, and ArcGIS Server development have been made this week.

New article - How to extrude features in globe
Programming language(s): C#
Development platforms: ArcGIS Desktop with 3D Analyst
Extrusion is the process of stretching a flat 2D shape vertically to create a 3D object. It is a simple way to create three-dimensional symbology from two-dimensional features. For example, you can extrude building polygons by a height value to create realistic building shapes. The three basic geometry types—points, lines and polygons—all support extrusion. This article explains the process of extruding a feature layer using different extrusion options in globe. Note: At the publish date, the code fragments in this document are provided in C# only. VB.Net code will be added at a later date.

NIM010762 - Document where temporary rasters are created
Programming language(s): VB6
Development platforms: ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Engine
The Working with ArcGIS Spatial Analyst objects article has been updated to document where temporary rasters are created by default and how to control their location...(read more)

Content changes posted to EDN over the past month or so

eleanord — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 01:40:00 GMT

While content updates have continued to roll on over the past month, I have not been around to post about them. Hopefully, you'll excuse the delay. Below is a recap of the more signifcant updates made during my absence. Additionally, lots of topics were updated to fix broken links and formatting issues that were noted by EDN readers. These types of updates are not included in the list below.

Enhanced Export topology errors sample
Programming language(s): VB6
Development platforms: ArcGIS Desktop
The Export topology errors sample has been enhanced to work with high precision and File geodatabases. The Export Errors sample can be used to export topology errors and optionally, exceptions, to Shapefile, Personal or File Geodatabase format. Errors can be exported based on three criteria; shape, type of topology rule, or topology rule.

Create and load a personal geodatabase sample updated
Programming language(s): VB6
Development platforms: ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Engine
The Create and load a personal geodatabase sample has been updated to include license initialization as well as minor changes to the way the spatial reference...(read more)